Putting yourself in their shoes is not empathy, running their entire mind in (system 1) sim is much closer, and when that fails, just feeling what they’re feeling without adding your reactions on top of it works. Doing real empathy is exceptionally important for romantic relationships imo.
I had a similar empathy problem a year ago, doing inner work around emotions fixed this, now a whole class of interactions I previously system 2 muddled through (such as people wanting comfort over solutions) now are mostly system 1 handled. I cannot stress enough, this is a system 1 problem with a system 1 solution.
I would briefly describe what I used to do as “putting myself in their shoes” (not real empathy!) and what I do now as “letting their experience in”, “being them”, etc.
I haven’t written about this much but Chris describes the same transformation here with a different frame and view about what blocks it.
There’s probably standard psychological/therapy literature on this too, seems like a very common block for people to have. (I say block because learning to do real empathy is mostly unlearning blocks NOT learning a new skill.)
Putting yourself in their shoes is not empathy, running their entire mind in (system 1) sim is much closer, and when that fails, just feeling what they’re feeling without adding your reactions on top of it works. Doing real empathy is exceptionally important for romantic relationships imo.
I had a similar empathy problem a year ago, doing inner work around emotions fixed this, now a whole class of interactions I previously system 2 muddled through (such as people wanting comfort over solutions) now are mostly system 1 handled. I cannot stress enough, this is a system 1 problem with a system 1 solution.
I would briefly describe what I used to do as “putting myself in their shoes” (not real empathy!) and what I do now as “letting their experience in”, “being them”, etc.
I haven’t written about this much but Chris describes the same transformation here with a different frame and view about what blocks it.
There’s probably standard psychological/therapy literature on this too, seems like a very common block for people to have. (I say block because learning to do real empathy is mostly unlearning blocks NOT learning a new skill.)
Oh I forgot: generally lack of empathy comes from not being comfortable with feeling every feeling. Chris mentions this, it’s a good post.
E.g. without feeling disgust what would John have to feel? Maybe helplessness? If he actually ran their mind in sim properly?
Maybe empathizing properly would mean he has to fix them and he doesn’t want that responsibility?
Idk there can be all sorts of couplings and locally optimal strategies that result in not feeling them and empathizing properly.